Old Jeremiah Horne was the beadle of the medical school at St. Bernard’s. He had held the post now for nearly thirty years, and his father held it before him. He and his family lived on the premises, and the post was generally understood to be a lucrative one. His motto was, “Nothing for nothing, and very little for a halfpenny.” He was a portly man, very dignified in his manner towards the younger students, who were kept at arm’s-length by him for purposes they well understood. He was not hard on them for their mischief, their breach of rules, their neglect of work, or any of their shortcomings, only they had to understand, if they wanted his aid, they must tip him well and tip him often. And this they did, and so Jerry Horne “waxed fat and kicked;” and even the professors themselves somehow came to recognise that the beadle was a not less important factor in the school than one of themselves. He could restore order when they individually or collectively repeatedly failed. A word from him would reduce the most refractory to his senses, when the threats and the preaching of the teachers fell on deaf ears. His business was to see that the theatres and class-rooms were duly arranged for lectures. He had to provide a proper supply of subjects for dissection, to prepare them and allot them in due order. But his most important duty, and the one which gave him the whip hand over all the men, was to register their attendance at lectures, and so make or mar their prospects of being duly “signed up” at the end of the session. By the rules of the examining bodies at “the Hall” or the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, a student must attend a certain proportion of all the lectures delivered in his school before his papers can be received and himself duly entered as a candidate for the necessary legal examinations which he must pass before he can get his diploma or certificate to practice. Mr. Horne’s conscience was elastic; and if a sufficient number of half-crowns and shillings were flying about, he could always see and register the presence of a man in the theatre at lecture who was probably at home in bed half a mile away. As everybody voted lectures a great bore, especially those which began at 8 or 9 o’clock on a winter’s morning, this was a great convenience. The lecturers poured forth their wisdom to a scant attendance at such times, and Mr. Horne’s half-crowns grew and multiplied.